Archive for December, 2008
Truly Twenty-First C. Literacy (Beyond Buzzwords)
Ben Grey’s “21st Century Confusion” post asks a simple question that I’ve often toyed with too:
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills believes demonstrating originality, communicating, being open and responsive, acting on creative ideas, utilizing time efficiently, accessing information, etc. are all 21st Century Skills. I’d retort that in reality, these skills have always been in existence and of the utmost importance. They don’t need to have the 21st Century moniker on them to make them significant.
I’ve often wondered the same thing: “What’s all this talk of ’21st century literacy’? (Ben somewhat conflates “literacy” and “skills” in his post.) Is there anything really new here? My comment:
The only uniquely “21st century literacies” I can think of involve the web.
Students need to be able to evaluate information on screens upon which any sage, charlatan, or idiot can publish. That’s new (sort of. Books really are open to the same range of authors).
They need to learn “online identity management,” and I would argue that’s a new literacy. New because they’re publishing themselves, and that means reading/writing/speaking/filming/photo-ing (literacy), and 21st century because privacy has never been so porous as now. They need to know how to keep Big Brother, Big Employer, and Big Google from knowing too much.
They need to learn “social reading” online. By that attempt at a cute label I mean the ability to evaluate communication acts by strangers in social networks, emails, comment threads wherever, and the whole range of places people can attempt to connect to us individually now. They need to be able to “read” a phish, for example, and a fraudster, and yes, a p&rv.
Hm. What else. Co-writing might be new. “How to participate in collaborative writing communities.” Wikipedia, for example. I know I don’t know how to do that.
Could we even go so far as to say that social networking online is itself a “new literacy”? That networking is (or may be) an essential skill for adulthood in the 21st century?
Hm. Searching. That’s new, yes? How to effectively search for good, timely information online, and do so efficiently. I know I’m still not great at that.
I’ll stop there. Thanks for the prompt. I agree the “21st c.” buzz can be as tiresome as the “2.0.” But I think the Berners-Lee Revolution has created some unique changes, just as Gutenberg’s did. Can you see any I missed?
Reply to Gary Stager’s HuffPo Post on Duncan
The comment thread on Gary Stager’s HuffPo article on the Duncan appointment wouldn’t allow this long response, so I’m posting it here.
Gary,
I’m still informing myself (and as others have noted, your links are now more of my homework), so I’m going to withhold judgment somewhat.
I will say that all the reading I’ve done so far – and I’ve been reading a lot – confirms that Duncan’s record in Chicago is far from miraculous.
But I’ve read some ‘benefit of the doubt’ types who note that Duncan’s hands may have been tied by the Daley machine. Since Duncan’s appointment is now a fait accompli, we can only hope he’ll surprise us under Obama.
I’ll also note that, a propos the tempest around gay-basher Rick Warren’s selection for the inauguration, Duncan gave strong support to a “gay-friendly” school in Chicago. (Yes, I’m aware such an idea smacks of “separate but equal,” but wrote here about why I still think it’s a good idea.) While not an educational feather, it’s still a refreshing one to see in a cabinet member’s cap.
We may as well add that Duncan is on record as condemning the lack of funding for NCLB, its stick-instead-of-carrot posture (which could be changed), and its low-cognition assessments. If he “reforms” NCLB along these lines – and yes, many more – I can think of worse outcomes.
In the end, the decisions on education under the Obama administration are Obama’s responsibility; what he said regarding HRC at State pertains to education as well: “I’ll make the decisions.” And while I’m as nervous as the next guy over so many of his moves lately, I guess I’m holding out hope that all the recent theater is outside-the-box tactics in a longer-term strategy that will make progressives proud. His campaign – a masterpiece of proving the nay-sayers wrong – makes me think more than twice that I can unriddle his long-term plan. So maybe he is selling out or simply making stupid choices; but maybe he’s not. He’s so damn poker-faced and close to the chest, it’s beyond me to know at this point.
I also take heart in the fact that he tapped Darling-Hammond to lead his transition team, and by choosing Duncan instead of a Rhee or Klein, arguably signaled his opposition to those more extreme edubiz proponents. I also take heart in the possibility that BO is so enamored of the “cabinet of rivals” idea in the Lincoln book he’s been touting lately that his appointment of Duncan might not equal an endorsement of Duncan’s record. Again: fait accompli – I’ll cling to any shred of hope until actions in office shred it beyond clinging.
This is all a long-winded way of saying you may be right, but until we see more, you’re not yet. Let’s hope you never are 
Parting shot: To me, the money quote of your article was this: “Perhaps we need federal legislation requiring a fully qualified superintendent in every school district!”
I’ve been thinking the same thing since I began watching the Texas Board of Edu-Creationism try to jimmy Genesis into science classes and, worse yet, textbooks nationwide (Texas standards wag the national textbook industry dog: if Texas votes to deny Darwin, all the science textbooks will aim to please. I still pray somebody stateside takes on the Smart Mobs idea to protest this putsch).
So I’d revise your money quote to add Board of Education members to the list of politicians requiring expertise in education. Failing that, we’re prey to anti-primate jackasses evermore.
An Approach to Teacher Merit Pay I Could Live With
Who is Arne Duncan and how will his choice as Secretary of Education affect education in the US (and, for better or worse in this hegemonic age, much of the rest of the world)? I’ve spent so many hours since the announcement reading reactions online that both my eyes and my brain cells are fried. (Enjoy the Diigo bookmarks if you’re masochistic.) All that reading will have to steep for a while before I can serve it as tea.
Until that happens, I’m going to focus on one controversy surrounding Duncan, and toss out some thoughts on it. That controversy is performance pay for teachers.
Bill Ferriter’s excellent recent post on this issue at the Tempered Radical got me thinking. I replied there,
Thinking about it a little more, this is what I can come up with so far:
We’d have to define “merit” to include the higher-order thinking skills – analysis, synthesis, evalutation/critical thinking, creativity – that the best learning projects require. This is not the opposite of the “fact-based, right/wrong, multiple choice” testing that NCLB and the College Board/AP/SAT pushes, but what you might call the upward extension of it. Mastery of facts is the beginning, not the end, of the assessment for meritorious teaching and learning.
If we start there, that means teacher merit is measured by the types of projects that are assigned in the classroom – not by the standardized testing industry – and by the performance of students who complete these projects. This further means that said teacher measurement is performed not centrally, but locally – or perhaps by boards consisting of local and central judges. (I know that “central” is vague.)
My thinking is that if teachers were rewarded for designing learning activities that measured positively against a checklist of such higher-order thinking traits – and crucially, that the measurement was based not on a single unit, but on a portfolio of all units assigned throughout the semester or year (this eliminates the dog-and-pony show liability of single principal evaluations) – then the best teachers would be rewarded with higher pay, while the worst ones would have an incentive to change their practice for the better. Teaching to the test wouldn’t be the goal any more; teaching to higher instructional standards would be.
As for what those higher instructional standards would look like, we need look no further than Linda Darling-Hammond for answers. Her presentation linked in an earlier post lays the groundwork for such guidelines.
As I commented on Will’s post about the Duncan pick,
Since Darling-Hammond led BO’s ed transition team, she may have had his ear long enough to fill it with good sense on how to reform NCLB’s assessments for the better – so that they align with better teaching-and-learning.
And I just discovered Bill Ferriter posted a follow-up to my comment, so off I go to fry a few more cells. Bill’s worth it.
Bush Accepts Evolution, not a “Literalist” (video)
Oh, the French wit. Just the right sauce for my Freedom Fries:
Asked to sum up Bush’s record on the [climate change] issue, France’s climate ambassador Brice Lalonde chose instead to pass on a story he had heard.
A man comes to the White House asking to see Bush. “He doesn’t live here anymore,” he is told. The next two days he comes again asking the same question, and receiving the same answer.
On the fourth day, the exasperated guard shot back: “I’ve already told you, he’s no longer here.”
“I know, I know,” the man replied. “But it’s such a pleasure to hear you say it.” (source)
It really is a pleasure.
It’s also a pleasure to hear the (at long last) outgoing Texan-in-Chief tell us that there’s “proof of evolution” that Biblical literalism can’t reasonably refute. If you missed that, here’s a little video I cooked up to applaud the occasion:
Help the Texas Freedom Network in their work to defend science in schools.
In case you missed the post on Smart Mobbing against creationism in U.S. science textbooks – my, how I’d love to see high school students jump on this idea – the post is here.
Clarifications (?) on “Slow Blogging” and “Fast Reading”
(A response to Morgante Pell’s “Slow Blogging in Fast Times.”)
“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
–Ben Hecht
Nice post. I’m sympathetic to the thrust, but would argue it’s not the length of the post that measures the quality of the writing, but the length of each idea within that post.
I’m thankful for almost every long sentence and long novel from our Joyces and Faulkners and Barths, and would never complain over their expansiveness. They teach us that “really long” can still be “not too long, but precisely long enough.” And that’s always the way it’s been with real writing. There’s nothing new here.
In this connection, the issue of slow blogging can easily become an object of abuse itself (and no accusations that that’s happening here). I’d argue we need to be careful to keep a high priority on regular, daily writing, and not pooh-pooh a high word count as the goal for our daily quota. That’s what real writers do. (“Inspiration is a lazy bitch. She won’t come to you. You have to chase her down every day.” – a paraphrase of something I read somewhere and hold dear, sexist language and all.)
So length, to repeat, is not the problem. The perennial teacher-answer to the perennial student-question – “How long does it have to be?” – “Not too short and not too long: just long enough to meet the demands of the assignment” – holds true for a writer’s self-assignments too.
It’s those “self-assignments” that bring us closer to any “problem” raised by the “slow blogging” camp. And to me, it’s only a problem for people who want to be writers instead of journalists.
There’s a place for them both, obviously. Fragmented reactions to the events of the day are the rightful domain of journalism, and many bloggers have placed their stakes in that territory. There’s nothing wrong with that. There could even be something very right with it, for blogger-journalists who choose to specialize in a narrow range of one or two topics – film, publishing, politics, whatever. Such daily engagement would not produce a “dumber” person at all, I would argue; on the contrary, it would grow into an “expertise” over time, a “deep learning” as a result of the daily reading-reflecting-writing cycle such “fast blogging” follows. (In many cases, it’s hard to deny this would also lead to improved writing skills, since these daily push-ups in sentence construction, organization, voice, and all the rest would serve as workouts to build the writing muscles.)
Where “fast blogging” goes wrong, then, is with that other writer: the one who wants something less daily, and more timeless. (Not to be prissy, but the French “belles-lettrist” is a label that comes to mind for this type of writer. Other labels such as “essayist,” “novelist,” “fiction-writer,” “non-fiction writer,” “philosopher,” “theorist,” and “poet” belong in this set too.)
For this writer, “fast blogging” is anathema. Not in length, mind you, but in subject matter. This writer is the one who should embrace “slow blogging,” it seems to me. And the surprise comes in that such an embrace demands decisions, above all, about what to read. And here’s where we might talk about “fast reading” – my term for S.P. Greenlaw’s mention of his RSS Reader addiction – as the real problem, not “fast blogging.”
Because it’s the “fast reading” that seduces us into fragmentation, immediacy, the second-hand instead of the hour-hand or, better, the historical timeline spanning centuries. Our writing reflects our ideas, and our ideas come to a large degree from the reading with which we occupy our minds. If we’re reading blogs daily, our minds and ideas are not only occupied by, but also sound like, “Boing Boing.” (Couldn’t resist.)
So for the writer aiming at timelessness, maybe the enemy is not the daily “fast blogging.” Maybe it’s the daily “fast reading”: the Google Reader, the Stumbling Upon, the one-inch “Digging” and consumption of the latest hi-calorie Delicious thing.
But let’s be fair. These “filtered” publishings we daily (hourly, secondly) consume are often of high quality and high value. The problem comes in the fact that, taken together, they are disjointed, fragmentary, somewhat random, and almost always “contemporaneous” and “immediate” – connected to the day or the year, but by no means the longer river of time. And that makes our thoughts more like mayflies flitting on that river than old growths towering beside it. Not much timelessness there.
So maybe the answer for “slow bloggers” isn’t the imperative to write daily online; maybe it’s to read daily - offline.
And yes, that means books.
Wordle Caption Competition Winner, Photoshop/Gimp Goodness
Announcing…
ΨΨ The Winner
of the McCain Stump Speech Wordle
“Write Your Own Caption”
Competition © ΨΨ
I am pleased to announce the winner is the very talented Vincent Robletto, whose Kerblotto blog screams “Subscribe” for its verbal and graphic wit and creativity. Vincent’s submission rose above thousands hundreds tens ones of rivals.1 So, without further ado [drumroll], first the unveiling, followed by Vince’s acceptance speech:
Robleto Acceptance Speech:
[Vince takes microphone. Voice trembling, blinking back tears, beaming:]
I landed a job as an advertising copywriter and won the McCain wordle today. It’s really been a stellar day.2
~ ~ ~
Okay, enough silliness. I do think it’s wonderful, though, how little whims like the lead-balloon Wordle contest 3 can still lead to new connections in this new world. I went to Vincent’s site and discovered some original Photoshop remix goodness he’d created, and got his permission to share. Two of my topical favorites:
A couple last examples of why I suffer from Photoshop Envy on a massive scale, from different posts on Vincent’s blog:
AIG: Strength to Beg.
and finally, for something completely different:
"Mmm...Ham face." Vincent Robleto.
And if you just want to laugh, find more than one, guaranteed, at Vincent’s selection of “A Few Bad Logo Choices.” (And congrats on the writing job, Vincent!)
Obligatory “Educational Relevance” Ending: On Photoshop Free Open Source Gimp as a Literacy Skill
Seriously: Have you, or has anyone you know, ever told students that original Photoshop (or, as Vincent corrected me, and used to make these images, the free open source software The Gimp) illustrations are encouraged – not instead of writing, but supplementing it – for essay assignments? I think it’s clear they should be. It’s a skill that sets a person apart. This whole post is all about that, in a way.
- And Diane Cordell was close on his heels. [↩]
- This from an actual email. [↩]
- It happens to all of us, Terry! [↩]
Oedipus, the Wordle
Talk about a "tragic fall."
Andrea Hernandez tagged me for this Wordle Meme:
1. Create a wordle from your blog’s RSS feed.
2. Blog it and describe your reaction. Any surprises?
3. Tag others to do the same.
4. Link back here and to where you were first tagged.
(I don’t know what “link back here” means, but Technorati is dying anyway.)
My reaction? It’s funny what a single 15-page literary essay that you decide to post does to the results of a Wordle. Any guesses on the topic of that essay?
The most interesting thing I see above, besides the nicely serendipitous “falling Oedipus,” is the little word, “Furthermore.” It’s only there because that Oedipus essay was a scholarly study. I avoid “furthermore,” “however,” and all other constipation-indicators in my writing voice today like I avoid, well, constipation (and academic writing). Instead of utilizing “furthermore” and the dreaded “however,” I use “also” and “but.”
This member of the Temple of Reason is glad to see that “science” and “education” elbowed their way into the Oedipal complex (and for the record, I love my Dad and my Mom – but not that way). He’s also glad to see the words “religion” and “gods” with no Abrahamic example in sight.
Okay, who (I know whom, but reject it) to tag?
I think some of the next generation:
21-year-old whiz Post-Punk Nerd S.P. Greenlaw.
High school whiz Teny Eurdekian (of Weltanschaaung).
And let’s throw Old Guy Michael Doyle, the Science Teacher, in there for good measure. (“Clam” will be his biggest word.) He’s younger at heart than most of us.
Feel free to decline, of course. And thanks, Andrea. (Did you notice the Obama change.gov website used Wordle last week or so?)
The Audacity of . . . . Culture!
Yes, I’m still gushing. I know he won’t be perfect, and is possibly farther right than Nixon in several ways, but by god, I just almost choked up watching Obama say these words in his Meet the Press interview with Tom Brokaw:
MR. BROKAW: Let me ask you as we conclude this program this morning about whether you and Michelle have had any discussions about the impact that you’re going to have on this country in other ways besides international and domestic policies. You’re going to have a huge impact, culturally, in terms of the tone of the country.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Right.
MR. BROKAW: Who are the kinds of artists that you would like to bring to the White House?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Oh, well, you know, we have thought about this because part of what we want to do is to open up the White House and, and remind people this is, this is the people’s house. There is an incredible bully pulpit to be used when it comes to, for example, education. Yes, we’re going to have an education policy. Yes, we’re going to be putting more money into school construction. But, ultimately, we want to talk about parents reading to their kids. We want to invite kids from local schools into the White House. When it comes to science, elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about. Thinking about the diversity of our culture and, and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that, once again, we appreciate this incredible tapestry that’s America. I–you know, that, I think, is, is going to be incredibly important, particularly because we’re going through hard times. And, historically, what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that, that sense that better days are ahead. I think that our art and our culture, our science, you know, that’s the essence of what makes America special, and, and we want to project that as much as possible in the White House.
Jazz. Poetry. Classical. Science. Reading – these things have been objects of scorn and smirks by the outgoing regime for the last eight years. I shouldn’t be close to tears that America’s incoming president understands the beauty and wonder of the mind and the creative spirit. I shouldn’t be.
But I am.
How to “Smart Mob” against Creationism in Textbooks (video)
Picture this: enterprising students in cities in Texas, particularly, and other cities nationwide – along with counterparts in Romania, which just mandated a Creationism-only science curriculum (I kid you not), and maybe Turkey, for good measure – organize Smart Mobs to strike, peacefully and simultaneously, out of the blue to demand only 21st century science – yes, I mean evolution – be included in their biology and other science textbooks.
And they do it quickly, before Texas’ Creationist-dominated Board of Education votes next Spring to insert Creationism yet again into its science standards. (See this post.)
They happen at such places as the Texas capitol building, the lobbies of textbook publishers’ headquarters, science museums, the national capitol, and wherever else seems like a good idea.
And they simply follow the steps of this excellent video (h/t to the Personal Democracy Forum):
And, because they’re good, peaceful citizens showing the will and responsibility to act for the education they deserve, the students who organize these events (more than once, please) include this as a bullet on their college application, to show that they’re more original and more consequential than the herd that joins the schooly National Honor Society and such. And the admissions officers at the best colleges see that bullet, and place their applications in the acceptance pile.
And they live actively and powerfully ever after.
If Obama’s doing it, kids, maybe it’s something you should consider as worth your time to learn. It might just help your future more than a couple hundred extra points on your SAT.
(Add to TheIndyDebate map)
Sophocles, Oedipus, and the Fallacy of Free Will
More Winter cleaning. I’m going to be posting a lot of scholarly essays from my college years on these pages so I can toss the paper copies. Paper’s a bear to box and ship when you live the global vagabond’s life.
I took a Greek tragedy and comedy class in college. We studied, among other works, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. The professor had a point of view – and a smugness about it – with which I strongly disagreed. He wanted to defend Sophocles as a believer in Free Will. I didn’t see it, and didn’t like his refusal (or inability) to see beyond his own interpretation. So this paper – a 14-page effort for a 5-page assignment, which was typical of me in college – takes it to him.
I haven’t read it since writing it in 1994, so the argument will be as new to me as to anybody else who likes this sort of thing. And that professor? He asked if he could keep a copy for his files. So maybe I managed to put a chink or two in his armor-plated head. [I just finished typing it. I like it, the academic Latinate notwithstanding, and the "sheer tedium," as I acknowledged in the essay, of cataloguing the millions of textual details supporting that Sophocles emphatically pushed his pen against Free Will in the play. My favorite part is the end, which goes into the political and intellectual context in which Sophocles wrote the play: the rise of humanism and atheism in classical Athens.]
I also went to great pains to link, using Apture, to Wikipedia articles that will pop up on the page for anyone wanting further reading about any of the characters, ideas, books, or scholars named. I did it as a demonstration of how much richer academic writing can be online than in print form. (Which is an interesting counterpoint to the Slow Blogging post from earlier today.)
Here’s the start, after which I’ll fold the rest into the permalink:
Of Kings and Strings:
Sophocles Contra Free Will in the Oedipus Tyrannus
Clay Burell
7 December 1994
Did Sophocles intend for his audience to understand the Oedipus Tyrannus [OT] as a “tragedy of fate”? Did he mean to demonstrate through Oedipus that freely-willed and self-determined actions are illusory through and through, that in reality they are the pulls of fate so softly on our puppet-strings that we don’t sense them?
To humanistic and Christian sensibilities, such a total denial of human freedom in the face of destiny is abhorrent. Very tellingly on this point, E. R. Dodds labels the fatalistic interpretation of the OT nothing less than a “heresy.” While admitting that “certain of Oedipus’ past actions [ie, his parricide and incest] were fate-bound,” here he draws the line: “everything [Oedipus] does on stage from first to last he does as a free agent.”1 But when Dodds substantiates this claim with a list of Oedipus’ allegedly free actions, the very language he uses to describe each of these actions paradoxically undercuts his own argument: Oedipus freely chose to consult Delphi, Dodds asserts, because pity for the Thebans “compelled” him to; he freely chose to act on the Delphic response because piety and justice “required” him to; he made the free choice to extort the damning truth from the herdsman because he “cannot rest content with a lie, he must tear away the last veil from the illusion”; finally, he freely decides not to heed the advice of Teiresias, Jocasta, and the herdsman to stop the investigation because “he must read the . . . riddle of his own life.”2 The compulsory adverbs – “compelled,” “required,” “cannot,” “must,” “must” – while not pointing to divine fatalism, suggest at least that Oedipus was determined by his own character. Being who he was, he could not act any differently than he did.
[Read the rest below the fold - especially if you want to argue about Free Will, about which I'm still a strong skeptic....] Read the rest of this entry »
